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Mortgage News Daily reports foreclosure activity remains relatively stable but some states may see an uptick this year. In the past two weeks I’ve noticed a huge uptick in my local market in the number of Foreclosure Sale filings (Notice of Trustee Sales). It appears the banks are now back from the elections and holidays and back to work… We’ll see how it all pans out with the politics and economy in 2013. I’m remaining optimistic but nothing the politicians or banks do will probably surprise me.

There were a total of 2,304,941 foreclosure filings in the United States in 2012 affecting 1,836,634 properties or one in every 72 residential units. This is only a 3 percent decrease from 2011 when 1,887,777 properties received a filing but is down 36 percent from the peak year of 2010 when 2.9 million properties were affected.

The largest inventory was in Florida where 305,766 properties were in some state of foreclosure or bank owned. That is 20 percent of the national total; another 14 percent or 212,172 properties were in California’s inventory. The three big government-related housing entities Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and the Department of Housing and Urban Development owned a combined total of 26 percent of the REO in the country followed by Bank of America and Wells Fargo with 8 percent and 6 percent respectively.

Note with less inventory prices are rising as demand grows. I’m not sure but I don’t think the table titled “Underwater Shrinkage” is referring to when I go swimming in cold water but may have more to do with the price to debt ratio (just guessing).